Libsyn Directory

[Founder Talk] How Blockchain unlocks value in data with Bruce Pon from Ocean Protocol

BEYOND UNICORN: Private Investors' Knowledge Base

Release Date: 08/05/2020

[Founder Talk] How Blockchain unlocks value in data with Bruce Pon from Ocean Protocol

BEYOND UNICORN: Private Investors' Knowledge Base

Today’s guest is Bruce Pon, CEO of BigchainDB and founder of Ocean Protocol. We began our conversation by probing into the value of data as an asset, what are the problems preventing the value of data being unlocked and how Ocean is solving that problem by building a protocol for data sharing, how it envisions global adoption through community building and industry partnerships. We discussed about the Ocean token – its usage, value creation and learnings from its IEO and ICO. Finally, we imagined a future where Ocean Protocol becomes the de facto protocol for access control and an Ocean...

[Investor Talk] EdTech investing in China with Veronica Zhou from Blue Elephant Capital

BEYOND UNICORN: Private Investors' Knowledge Base

Today’s guest is Veronica Zhou, partner of Blue Elephant Capital, the first pure play education technology focused early stage investment fund in China. We began our conversation by segmenting the Chinese education market into 3 broad segments, namely to consumer (2C), to school (2S) and to business (2B). We then delved deeper into the complex sales system in the “to school” segment; how Covid-19 created the paradigm shift in online education. And lastly, we discussed Blue Elephant Capital’s investment approach and the key investment theses in the next 5 years. Key highlights...

[Founder Talk] What it takes to win the social commerce race with David Ng from Pollen

BEYOND UNICORN: Private Investors' Knowledge Base

Today’s guest is David Ng, co-founder and CEO of Pollen, a community sales-as-a-service platform empowering brands to turn their fans into resellers. We began our conversation by diving into Pollen’s business model – understanding the challenges and opportunities of a B2B model versus a B2C model, dissecting the key value proposition and the key stakeholders’ relationships of social commerce, highlighting the difference between social commerce and multi-level marketing. Lastly, we discussed the competitive landscape of social commerce and how Pollen positions itself among the...

[Expert Talk] The business of fashion and retail with Stefaan Le Clair from Berenike Global Fashion Management (Part 2 of 2)

BEYOND UNICORN: Private Investors' Knowledge Base

This episode is part two of our industry talk on fashion and retail. And it follows on from our discussion in the previous episode released two weeks ago. In this episode, we looked at the rise of Direct to Consumer brands, and how technology contributed to this trend; the truth surrounding online and offline retail, the challenges faced by department store and then circling back to considerations of franchising and licensing which were first introduced in the last episode. Finally, we conclude our discussion by zooming out to a more general discussion on overall industry trends. Our expert...

[Expert Talk] The business of fashion and retail with Stefaan Le Clair from Berenike Global Fashion Management (Part 1 of 2)

BEYOND UNICORN: Private Investors' Knowledge Base

This episode kicks off a mini series of industry specific expert talks. The objective of industry talks is to help investors to structure their thought process when evaluating companies operating in these industries. It also helps entrepreneurs who are looking to start a company in these industries. Today we begin with fashion and retail industry. And our expert guest is Stefaan Le Clair, the Managing Director of Berenike Global Fashion Management. Stefaan’s past industry experiences include being the VP of Retail Europe at Espirit Group, the CEO of denim brand Lee Cooper, the General...

[Investor Talk] The truth about angel investing with Sam Gibb from Endeavour Ventures

BEYOND UNICORN: Private Investors' Knowledge Base

Today’s guest is Sam Gibb, founding partner of Singapore-based early stage VC fund Endeavour Ventures. We began our conversation with Sam’s personal investing experience as an active angel - how he got started, his view and recommendation on deal sourcing and network building. We then went on to discuss the five things that he looks for in a start-up, the reality of financial return and motivation of angel investing. And finally, on his recent transition from angel to VC and what are his key investment focuses for 2020. Key highlights from our conversation Getting involved with angel...

[Expert Talk] Achieve long-term investment success through asset allocation with Freddy Lim from StashAway

BEYOND UNICORN: Private Investors' Knowledge Base

Today’s guest is Freddy Lim, Chief Investment Officer and Co-founder of StashAway - an online investment management company headquartered in Singapore. We began with a market update focusing on the thought process investors can use to analyse current market conditions and the key reasons behind the decoupling of financial markets from the real economy. We then shifted our discussion to understand StashAway’s proprietary investment strategy, ERAA - namely the Economic Regime-based Asset Allocation and how ERAA can be applied to understand post-crisis recovery. Top 5 Takeaways Focus on...

[Investor Talk] Crypto as a new asset class with Paul Veradittakit from Pantera Capital

BEYOND UNICORN: Private Investors' Knowledge Base

Today’s guest is Paul, Partner at Pantera Capital – one of the earliest institutional Blockchain investment firms. Paul began by sharing his personal journey from learning about Blockchain to eventually joining Pantera Capital to drive its VC funds. We then went on to discuss its investment thesis and how it evolved from the first fund to third fund now, and then broadened our discussion to evaluate popular industry narratives namely cryptocurrency will become a new asset class and Bitcoin’s role as a safe haven asset. And lastly, we explored how blockchain will impact the VC industry....

[Expert Talk] Investing through crisis: Covid-19 Macro market update with Tian Yang from Variant Perception

BEYOND UNICORN: Private Investors' Knowledge Base

Today’s guest is Tian Yang, Head of Research at Variant Perception – an independent research company on financial markets. Against the backdrop of global financial market sell-off triggered by Covid-19, we analysed the market reactions by segmenting genuine causes of concern vs panic reaction; we discussed lessons learnt from historical black swan events and how these lessons can be applied to the current situation; and how government policies can work together to avoid recessionary pressures created by Covid-19 and lastly, what should private investors do to seize opportunities in these...

[Investor Talk] Decode AI investing with Kelly Chen from DCVC

BEYOND UNICORN: Private Investors' Knowledge Base

Today’s guest is Kelly Chen, partner at DCVC – one of the earliest VC funds to focus on deep tech investments. We began our conversation with basic definitions, the concept of autonomy, and then went on to discuss commercially viable applications, value creation considerations and thought process when evaluating AI investment opportunities. And lastly touching on broader topics such as the ethical aspect of AI and what lies ahead in the next five years. Key Takeaways Key terms defined: artificial intelligence (AI) is about how to make computers intelligent; machine learning is a subset of...

More Episodes

A personal disclaimer before we begin – I am a holder of Ocean Token since March 2019.

Key highlights from our conversation

Data is worth at least as much as land
Data is the new asset that people are going to be able to monetize, securitize, use as collateral. The hypothesis is that data is worth at least as much as land which is estimated to be worth $7trillion by an economist. This belief is further reinforced by the fact that the top 10 most valuable companies in the world today are mostly internet platforms, information platforms.

Blockchain is the middle layer between data provider and data buyer
The key problem with centralised data marketplaces is that they need to have custody of your data which results in the need for trust – data providers need to trust that the data marketplaces can manage your data well, keep it secure and provide you with a full audit trail. This often limits data sharing. What blockchain can do is to act as a trusted middle layer – the custodian for data, providing the data providers the full control of their data.

The Ocean Protocol is fundamentally an access control system.

Currently, there aren't any other protocols that look at data sharing as an access control problem. Ocean is the access control layer. In five years, what I want is Ocean being seen as the protocol that everybody follows to use for access control.

The usage and value accrual of Ocean Token
At the very core, any crypto token can be used as a means of exchange. In the case of Ocean token, it is the means of exchange within Ocean Protocol. So that's the base level.

Second thing. And this is since the inception of the proof of authority network, you can use Ocean tokens to kickstart smart contracts on our proof of authority network. So right there was utility of this kind of a native token for a unique network.

Moving into the future, we're going to have some other exciting kind of uses of the Ocean token. Number one is we're going to kickstart the network rewards. This is 51% of the total supply that we've talked about from the very beginning. That is kind of a discount token model that allows value to come back into the ecosystem if people are using the protocol. And then there's another use case where we have for the Ocean token, which is governance. That's a little preview of what we're going to be releasing later on this year.

In the blockchain space, you can't separate speculation from utility from kind of global adoption. I think it all plays together. I see speculation very, very optimistically. It is viewed as this interplay between builders, speculators and the existing kind of traditional world where we are trying to disrupt.

Content at a glance with time-code

(01.36) Bruce’s background story
(03.18) BigchainDB and Ocean Protocol explained
(05.57) Data as an asset is worth at least as much as land
(07.38) Core problems in data that Ocean Protocol is solving
(17.56) How Ocean Protocol is designed to overcome trust, privacy and security of data
(20.30) Uses cases and industry partnerships of Ocean Protocol
(24.59) Importance of community for decentralised projects like Ocean Protocol
(27.30) The usage and value accrual of Ocean Token
(33.03) Learning from Ocean’s failed IEO
(36.47) The value of speculation within Crypto
(39.38) The future of Ocean Protocol imagined

Episode links
BigchainDB: https://www.bigchaindb.com/

Ocean Protocol: https://oceanprotocol.com/

Ocean’s blog post on IEO: https://blog.oceanprotocol.com/what-happened-with-the-ieo-54cc5c6c3db9

ChainLink: https://chain.link/

TOPICS